Like celli, who will be very understanding when she gets into work this morning and sees that saying "ground beef" and "spaghetti" in combination to me has prompted a 400+ word essay touching on the basics of on my personal theory of what goes into a good red sauce (the various types of meats or lack thereof), how and why why I learned to cook the way I do based on my mother and maternal grandmother's food and personal histories and theories of economizing, food history back into the Roman Empire, and food science. Which I don't go into depth on, because it's early and also it's work email, but still.

Also she has prompted my meal planning for a bastardized primavera sauce for later this week, which is an entirely different type of pasta sauce. Though it does have mushrooms in it, and parmesan, which will contribute nicely to the umami. (I really can't stop myself.)

(Also it might be time to try another run at that delicious fresh fava bean and parmesan salad, even though fresh fava beans are a gigantic pain to peel. But it was SO GOOD. I just need to remember to get a loaf of good sourdough or French bread to toast first to soak up the sauce.)

Also she will forgive me for not ending a nested parenthetical properly.

Though she will laugh at me. Probably a lot. (I will deserve it.)

But the nice thing about pasta sauce is that I can cook it gluten-free and she can still come over and eat it ANY TIME. We can have a GF pot and a gluten pot of pasta. Which she knows. This is the joy of pasta. The pots wash and the gluten comes off. It's not like flour, which gets in the nooks and crannies of the KitchenAid and stays EVERYWHERE.

Though I do have a nifty recipe for GF peanut butter cookies from Smitten Kitchen if we ever want to get together and bake something. I could use a hand mixer or a wooden spoon instead of the KitchenAid. Also you do the GF stuff first, before you get the flour in the air, so that you don't cross-contaminate.

So here’s a public promise: after I have fulfilled my immediate contractual obligations, I will no longer support in any way any writing-related programme or organisation that does not have a public commitment to and specific timetable for becoming accessible. I will call on other writers to do the same.

Another closet space cleaned - as in, only things I want to keep in the closet (and in nice order), everything else outside of the closet in a pile that I have to work through.

Shouldn't be too hard right, since there's really only two options: donate away or throw away. But nope, there is some really difficult decision regards the things that I know I don't want to keep, but I can't bring myself to throw away. The biggest problem category is the VHS cassettes. I know rationally that I don't use them anymore, but there is a lot of them, and those cassettes are very intertwined with a lot of memories - with the handwritten stickers and all.

And I refuse to put the boxes back to the closet, because this step has been taken, and now it's decision time, goddammit. (I'm not going to do this again)

KonMari advices to thank the items, pouring salt over them to let them go in peace and then just throwing them away. It should help to feel better about it. I suppose I have to try that, and possibly be ready to have a good cry. I don't know, it's silly, but sometimes tidying gets weirdly emotional.

Uuh, maybe I should take a nap at this juncture to think this through.

In watching the show, I noticed that it seems to play into stereotypes that I’ve experienced firsthand that could have easily been avoided and that may present damaging information about autistic people. There is so much misinformation about autism in part because we nearly always learn about autism from non-autistic people, instead of learning about autism from autistic adults.

So, my KonMari project has been stalled for ages, and I decided to use this vacation time to get it moving again. I started from the beginning, a.k.a clothes, and I just had to open one closet to realize where I had gone wrong.

I've discarded the clothes just fine, but apparently I didn't take those discarded items anywhere - instead I had the great idea to stuff them in the next closet, creating a lovely chaos there. Uuuuuh. I'm so stupid! (...and I had completely forgotten that I had done this.)

At least I have packed everything in plastic bags, which is good, except I didn't mark them in anyway, so now I have to check them all to see what is going where - recycling or trash.

So, long, annoying day today, but I got the whole clothing category done and everything is in its place now (in a way that I feel will work in the long run). That's good! Hopefully I can keep that going, because there is still the paper category that I didn't even touch in the last round.

And the best part is I didn't technically spent any money, because I remembered I have 10 euros left in a bookstore gift card - bam, new pen! :D (I've always lived by the principle that gift card gifts can, and should, be used as frivolously as possible, for the most fun.)

Why yes, the purple ink is lovely, and now I'm going to write a whole bunch, and then erase it through the magic of friction. Yep yep, that will be an excellent way to avoid cleaning today (ugh, cleaning).

I have no plans for the next two weeks. Upside: I can do whatever, whenever. Downside: most likely I end up doing nothing at all.

But I tried to start with projects: I took my carpet to the cleaners, vacuumed, did the laundry and baked a blueberry pie (though I don't know if its any good, because its just cooling now, but it looks like a pie? With my cooking abilities, that's a pretty great start).

Because it has been such a cool and rainy summer, the berry season is only now going strong - I think I've eaten like three litres of strawberries in the last two weeks, and two litres of blueberries. I'm so stuffed with antioxidants, that I should be all set through winter :D

I'll go eat some pie and be lazy, what else is the summer vacation for?

The woman who lead her up the stairs to see the two rooms she’d been able to afford on what was left of her army pay doesn’t even blink at the sight of the scars around her neck. The stairs creaked as they climbed, and the person in the room downstairs was snoring so hard that the windows rattled, even if it was still bright outside.

“A business, you said?” the woman had said instead, looking at the huge medical bag in Igorina’s hand and at her spotless apron. “Stitching those up that can’t afford those fancy doctors, then?”

“A hand where needed, Madam,” Igorina said, touching her hair as if to remind herself that there was no need to dress up as a boy in the city. “I’ll give help to all those that want it.”